This Blog is the newsletter for my Speaking and Marketing Tips Web site providing a collection of low cost marketing tips and tools with a bias towards smaller businesses and a strong emphasis on public speaking, networking and internet marketing.

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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

One downside of being a professional speaker is that I get to attend hundreds of meetings every year and listen to literally thousands of speeches. The downside is that most of them are boring.

I have never quite understood this. Surely people know when they are not good at speaking. The clue is in the number of audience members who are falling asleep or leaving during the presentation.

The reason people are boring I believe is that they are scared to do anything exciting in case they make a fool of themselves, and that is the primary reason for fear of public speaking. Most of us can speak in public places - as long as we are not the centre of attention - and when we are it is the fear of ridicule or embarrassment that challenges us.

For the past 30 years I have coached all sorts of people to improve their speaking skills and brought it down to just four simple principles and unlike many authors of books on this subject I will briefly explain you those steps now.

You might wonder why you would then want to buy the book if I have explained the content.

The workbook contains 13 practical assignments designed to take you on a journey to discover how to turn your own content into compelling speeches using the four basic principles outlined below. By the end of seven days you will be standing up in front of an audience feeling empowered and ready to entertain and inform.

Just $27 to Banish Fear of Speaking in Public

Four Principles of Outstanding Speaking

1. Speak from Experience2. Become a Storyteller3. Provide Clear Purpose and Structure4. Be Passionate about Your Topic

1. Speak from Experience

Speak on a topic about which you have earned the right to speak. If you speak about something you know well, if you speak on a topic about which you are an expert, then you are going to feel far more confident, and more importantly you don't have the problem of trying to remember the speech, because you already know the content inside out. And of course you are already an expert on the subject of your life which is the source of your primary content.

2. Become a Storyteller

Develop stories about your experiences in life and in work. Start getting into the habit of telling stories to friends and colleagues socially or at work. Stories are easy for us to remember as speakers and easy for the audience to remember.

3. Provide Clear Purpose and Structure

When you start writing your speech, begin with a clear and definite purpose. Why are you delivering this speech? What exactly do you want to achieve with it? What are the audience expecting from it? Write out your One main message - your purpose – and then support that with three key points to illustrate the purpose with interesting facts and stories and you have a winning speech. That makes it easy for you to remember and easy for the audience to recall. They will thank you for your clarity and you will overcome your fear because won't make a fool of yourself.

4. Be Passionate about Your Topic

Get excited and passionate about what you speak about. People spend so much time trying to memorise a speech and then perform it, when really all that is needed is to get passionate. The more excited you are the better your animation, the better your gestures and body language and the more engaged your audience will become – put all these four elements together and you are sure to have a compelling speech.

There are now 90 Million users on LiknkedIn and people are jopining at the rate of 1 every second - more importantly the average income of LinkedIn users is over £100,000. That says a lot about the power of the network.

When I first started using linked in I linked up with lots of power networkers but found that was not really useful except in expanding my reach. It was not until the Groups feature was significantly improved that the real value of the network has become aparent.

I joined 49 groups, and set up my own GenderShift group which now has about 110 members. With my own group I can broadcast messages - though its important not to overuse the feature of people will leave. I participate as much as possible in discussions on groups and I have invited a number of people in the UK I would like to connect with - and most have accepted.

Again you have to use these features respectfully - When you invite members of a group you can do so without their email address by indicating you are in the same group. If you have already invited them - then you will be asked for their email address to invite again - I have found a few times that I have been asked to decifer a graphic image after I have sent a lot of invites - so now I limit it to a few every day.

The real benefit of this has been that I am able connect with key contacts on major corporations. If you have ever tried to reach someone in a large company when you don't have a name you will know how difficult it is. Many organisations only publish a call centre number.

As a result of this strategy over the past couple of months I have already had one booking for speaking and a number of enquiries for help - I have also managed to recruit some really excellent contacts to my own group. More importantly I am establishing my name and reputation in a community of professionals who potentially could be buyers or influencers of my services.

So check out the article and get working on making LinkedIn a significant tool in your marketing strategy.